A community publication (e.g., a local newspaper, a city weekly, a school paper, a town crier, a drag car racing magazine, a Russian-American association publication, etc.) may be a publication that focuses its content on topics which are relevant to a focused audience. The focused audience may share traits which are personal in nature (e.g., lifestyle interest, culture, national origin, language, etc.) and/or the focused audience may share traits which are geographic in nature (e.g., live in the same town, city, county, state, etc.). The community publication may be developed around specific topic areas (e.g., news for merchants in a specific industry, fans of particular sports, patrons of the arts, residents of a particular city, participants in the same sorts of lifestyles, etc.)
The community newspaper may hire a community journalist from the focused audience (e.g., so that the community journalist can relate with patrons of the community publication) to keep the community publication relevant to the focused audience. The community journalist may be a civic minded individual who cares about events and happenings in their local neighborhood, and who may desire to contribute and give something back to their neighborhood. The community journalist may volunteer for the community publication and/or work part time for the community publication (e.g., supplemented with a second source of income). The community publication may have an expensive overhead to support the community journalist, in the form of a central office, administrative support, printing equipment, delivery agents, management, and/or advertising professionals.
To get the most interesting stories, the community journalist may solicit story ideas from neighbors, readers and local businesses to stay relevant to the focused audience and to differentiate the community publication from other community newspapers. For example, a reader may submit a story idea to the community publication (e.g., through a letter to an editor) with a desire to be recognized for an event and/or observation in their life (e.g., 250 pound pumpkin, bumper crop of cherries, grand opening bargains, wedding, graduation, obituary, sports award, etc.). The community journalist may manually screen interesting stories after receiving them from the administrative support, and physically interview the reader by scheduling a time to meet over the phone.
In addition, to stay profitable, the community publication may seek advertising from local businesses. However, the community publication may be faced with increased competition from the Internet (e.g., Craigslist@, Google@, etc.) for advertising (e.g., for jobs, real estate, cars, personal ads, etc.), and for available leisure time to read the community publication.